


But, Is Vine Still A Thing?

by Araceli



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Multiverse, No character bashing, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-20 15:35:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19994575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araceli/pseuds/Araceli
Summary: If Clint's being honest, he is having a bit of an odd day. And by odd, he means bad. Or, rather, both. The day is odd and it is bad, and he would very much like to get off this ride, please. Of course, that is not an option. Nope. He's going to have to stick this out. He's going to have to sit here and listen to The Avengers (but he only recognizes maybe half of them? and none of them are Thor) tell him a story involving multiple alien invasions, the death of half the life on Earth, magic space rocks, and time travel all the while feeling like five different kinds of reasons to stay in bed.Then they tell him he died. So. Yeah.Not great.Although Lucky is having a grand ol' time. Which is nice and everything Lucky deserves.Or: An Endgame that had different ending and Fraction Hawkeye gets sucked into the multiverse.





	But, Is Vine Still A Thing?

**Author's Note:**

> Written in present tense because by the time I realized what I had done? It was too late. Clint sometimes calls Lucky “Luck.” He calls Steve Rogers “Cap”, but also sometimes “Steve”, but mostly “Cap.” There are reasons for this. I don’t get into them. But they exist. These are not typos. Written mostly on my mobile, because life is complicated and writing in present tense wasn’t punishment enough I guess. Also, this was only meant to be 5000 words tops. It got away from me in either the best way, or worst way possible. IDK WTF happened. I just want to stop messing with it. Please enjoy.

Clint lands about as gracefully as he can manage. Which is to say, if he were still at the circus the other acrobats would have laughed themselves into oxygen deprivation because he hits the ground with the sum total of zero grace. Hits it suddenly. Hits it hard. Lucky, the poor dog, gets pulled along. The one eyed mutt tumbles after, like Alice following the rabbit, landing on his human’s leg with a pained yelp to match Clint’s own. After they land Lucky struggles to spring back up. Panic makes the dog uncoordinated, his four limbs entangling with two of his human’s.

Clint’s right side took the brunt of impact from the ground. His left leg took the brunt of Lucky. “Ow, knee,” he groans which sharply becomes, “Futz, my appendix,” when Luck manages to dig a sharp nailed paw into the fleshly square radius where that useless organ supposedly lurks. Or maybe the dog only bruised some intestines. Ugh, biology. Whatever.

The dog manages to get all paws on the ground. Which is good. Clint feels proud.

Proud, but also nauseated. Not from the shame of being unable to achieve the same feat as a dog. The two things are entirely unrelated. Well, no. Wait. They had both fallen. The nausea from the fall is why Clint holds no plans to get his feet on the ground any time soon. Like, ever. Possibly never. Lucky may keep the accomplishment.

His head is pounding. The world is spinning. His lungs are burning, and Clint feels not only confused but also betrayed by these sudden, unprovoked symptoms of what can only be described as the world’s worst hangover. An acute hangover. The kind of hangover that means you’re still sort of drunk. Sober enough to realize imminent pain looms on the horizon, intoxicated enough where the floor really is the best place to be, if only to quiet down the spins. Clint maintains a strict “couch only” furniture policy in situations such as these. As few and far in between as they may be, if only for the illusion of responsibility that comes with having any sort of rule at all. Not at all because couch height is the perfect height to reach the bucket. Or stew pot.

The rule applies to concussions. Actually, concussions are the basis for the rule. Clint does not actually drink all that much. Or often. Clint vaguely feels like a wet blanket. He never did the teenage party thing.

Did do the run away to the circus thing. So. There’s that.

Teenage assassin/thief thing too.

Now on top of vomity and concussed, Clint feels like maybe, perhaps, he lived not such a normal life. He already knew this. Rehashing life experiences as compared to 90s movies, however, feels a whole lot better than dwelling on the utter state of rebellion burning up his esophagus. He has not eaten in several hours. Vomiting is not what would happen. Dry heaving is what would happen, and dry heaving is the absolute, undisputed worst. Jeff Lebowski save him from this plight.

Above him, Lucky is having a grand ol’ time. The long fur of his tail brushes to and fro against Clint’s ear with every wag. This is a good thing. Lucky deserves good experiences.

“Is it…him?”

The voice registers as a point within Clint’s current radius of intelligible awareness. “No,” he talks into the cool, surprisingly smooth concrete. “I have died. I am dead. Please take care of dog. He likes pizza. And the radio. Soft Rock.”

“That is certainly a thing he would say.” Another point within the radius.

“Is it ironic that that’s the first thing he would say?” A third.

“No, more coincidental.” A forth? No, the second again.

More voices join, and futz. Everything turns a few shades of slightly more awful. This is starting to feel like an abducted by the bad guy’s situation. Him on the verge of migraine, bad guy minions conversing as if he weren’t actually able to hear them discussing, for painful examples, who they were selling him to, or what they were going to do to his organs. Typical bad guy, minion things. Manipur hadn’t even been that long ago. He just got out. Can he not get a break?

Cracking open an eye, he finds the surprisingly smooth concrete is marbled tile. A swank jail cell?

Biting the bullet, he swings up into a seated position. A mistake before his back pockets firmly touch the grey tiles. The world rotates like a spun penny. There are bad ideas and then there is what he just did. In a flash of instinct Clint palms the sides of his head to keep the thing firmly attached to his shoulders, as opposed to rolling off. As heads do.

It is a bad instinct. Un-decapitated heads do not roll off. Though it is a good cover to press and pull at the skin around the hinge of his jaw, enough to get the hearing aids jammed into his ear canals to sit properly. More properly? No. Better. That’s it, better. They sit better. No. Still doesn’t sound right. Grammer- _Dumb._

Lucky barks. Happy bark number three. It’s more of an excited yip. A joyous sound released only as an immediate response to seeing children. Lucky loves children. Lucky loves playing with children. In Dog Heaven there exists nothing but endless boxes of pizza, days full of new sounds and smells, and an innumerous amount of children to chase and be chased by as The Eagles sing about running against the wind and running down roads. The Eagles like to run, apparently. Clint never noticed. Huh.

No. Bob Segar. Bob Segar runs against winds. Yeah.

Lucky likes them both anyhow.

Glancing over, Clint sees Luck assuming the dog’s universal sign to throw down. Shoulders low, butt up, tongue hanging out, tail wagging at a speed suitable for liftoff. He leaps to all fours, yips excitedly, and drops back down.

Following the sight line to find the subject of Luck’s playful attention Clint finds, well, he finds a group. With the world still in soft focus, Clint never minds the majority of the people facing him, because well, because. Hallucination. It has to be. It just… okay. Story time. See, it looks almost as if there once existed a very long hallway. At one end stood Bruce Banner. At the other end stood The Hulk. It looks almost as if the two charged at one another in the world’s most ill-advised game of chicken in the entire known history of the game. Except instead of the expected outcome of poor Bruce getting pancaked by a large, green, humanoid Mack truck what they got was a combination of the two. Hulk’s size with mostly Bruce’s features.

“Clint, you okay?”

“Trash can,” he demands breathlessly. “Stock pot. Something.”

It achieves the flurry of frantic activity one may expect. A hand thrusts a large aluminum mixing bowl his way and Clint grabs it. He settles it into his lap and hunches over it for no immediate need other than the intense want to hunch over something. To have an excuse to curl in. Because there will be no dry heaving. Not today.

Each eye socket is assigned the heel of one hand. Clint presses in hard.

The people are talking. Conversing, as a group, in murmurs. The words remain indecipherable. Clint focuses inward. Tries to focus inward. He leans forward more. His hands drag along to his scalp. His forehead touches the cold rim of the bowl, all while the rubber of his converse dig almost painfully into the backs of his thighs. All this sensory input is nearly enough to ground him. Sure, his heart feels about ready to jack hammer right out of his chest. Alien style. He also can’t fully expand his lungs hunched this far over, so safe bet is that he’s hyperventilating something fierce. Rapid, shallow breathing is not good for much. Or so medics tell him.

“Clint, man,” a voice, male and deep, and pitched perfectly for reassuring, “you can’t stay like this. Either sit up, or lay back. You’re half a minute from passing out.”

See. Found the medic.

Usually the medics who know him, who call him by his first name and not his codename are those he in turn also knows by name. Clint looks to the left. Where a person has taken a knee, he expects to find a familiar face. He does not. Reassuring it is not. Alarming it very much is.

Male, African American, with concerned eyes on a kind face Clint cannot identify. 

There must be something worth reading in Clint’s expression. Whatever it may be most probably does not speak as any brand of kindness for the man to steel himself the way he does. “Okay, it’s okay. You don’t know me, and that’s okay.” It almost feels okay, how he says it. Low and slow, like a mantra. “My name is Sam and I am qualified enough to tell you that you need to get ahold of your breathing. Sooner rather than later.”

Nodding seems like a good idea. It is not. His brain rolls around his skull like a steel ball.

“And by sooner I mean now. Right now.”

Sitting up straight seems an impossible task. Clint flops to one side, keeping a firm grip on the bowl as he goes. His legs end up in an inelegant, tangled sprawl. Knowing full well the reaction this will get, Clint still doesn’t bother to fix them.

“Well, that is more like it,” Sam comments in good humor, “but I know you know that both shoulders need to be touching the ground and your knees should be bent with your feet flat on the floor.”

Medics aren’t largely know for compromising. Similarly Clint is not known for being a letter of the law sort of guy. He bends his knees, gets the soles of his shoes somewhat on the ground. He stays mostly turned on one side. Both arms wrap around the bowl, clutching the thing to his chest. This is all Sam’s going to get. Deal. With. It.

“What,” Clint begins to ask. He means to curtail a Medic vs Clint argument with a question of what happened though he can’t seem to articulate what it is he wants to ask exactly. “How?”

“That is an easy question with a very complicated answer. Let’s just focus on the basics for now, such as breathing.” Sam’s moved to a seated position. He’s not in Clint’s personal space. He’s not far from it either. “Just know that you’re not the only one we’ve helped through this, and if you do hurl, well, you won’t be the only one to do that either.”

Ugh, no, stomach. He clutches the bowl. “No. No dry heaving.” He already promised himself.

That earns him a frown. “When’s the last you ate?”

The calzone enters his mind entirely uninvited. Sliced meats, chopped vegetables, marina, and that entire basil leaf Clint nearly choked on. Amazing food. Terrible experience. Yelp review of four stars. Although now the memory of bitter basil makes acid crawl up his chest. Saliva coats the back of his mouth and not in the good way. “Uh,” he groans. He swallows, because no. No dry heaving. “Yesterday. Last night… last night-ish. Late lunch?” Somewhere in there. Close enough.

“Uh-huh. And what meal should you be about to eat?”

The cool tile feels fantastic against his face. Clint soaks it up all the while wondering how best to explain to this stranger that he had woken up, not looked at any sort of clock, took Lucky for a walk, and then ended up on this very tile not knowing how without it sounding like he is entirely unemployed. Like, the bad kind of unemployed. Where he has given up all hope, lost all concept of time and coping with the loss by turning into a blackout drunk, day drinker. Which he most definitely is not. Booze aside, far as he knows, most people at least maintain a passing interest in the time of day. Choosing the above avenue of conversation would earn him a one way ticket to psych. Naturally a conclusion to be avoided at all costs. Details. He needs details. The sun had been high overhead? Last he saw. So late morning, noonish? Early dinner plus skipped lunch definitely signals a lack of appetite to all medics everywhere. Justifying everything to sleep is out of the question because that would mean twelve plus hours in bed without any physical, tangible reason. Futz. His ass is totally ending up in psych.

He decides to cut the difference. “Uh, brunch?”

A heavy sigh. “So you’re hyperventilating and hypoglycemic. You definitely are not going to want to hear this, but you just might need something to eat.” The idea sounds about as on par as all the other bad ideas Clint played out so far. The burning creeps further upward. Sour bile collects at the back of this throat. Hard pass. No Bueno.

“You’re right. Didn’t want to hear that. Take it back.”

“Okay. Drink then. Drink something. Anything. We got Gatorade.”

That sounds not as terrible. “Red. Cold. Or nothing,” he counters. One does not simply agree with a medic; first one performs the age old art of haggling.

Out of the group one of them delivers his demands much too quickly. For that Clint hates them. He does not know them, but he feels uncharitable towards their person. The plastic bottle stings his palm with cold, and it has the fancy, twisty sport opening he always turns the wrong way first. He can drink and stay on his side. Blissful red artificial flavor washes away the acidic, stale cheerios bitterness back down and away from his tongue.

He tenses, waiting for the need to lurch up as the sports drink forces its way back up.

The rising red tide never comes. He hazards another sip, and then another. Half the bottle is gone when Clint suddenly feels exhausted, wrung out and chilled from laying on the cold, hard ground. He flops out, star fish style. Fancy Gatorade bottle in one hand, aluminum bowl in the other. The bowl clangs against the tile.

“Better?” Sam asks sounding like he knows the answer. He sounds pleased. Smug. Unacceptable. 

“If I do barf, it’ll be red and you’ll never know if any of it is actually blood. You know, _from internal bleeding._ ” Clint informs the room for Medic Reasons he has yet been unable to prescribe as age old anything, other than the God given right to be an annoying shit if one is in fact the youngest sibling of their biologically assigned family unit. Clint has exactly one sibling, an older brother. Being an annoying shit is second nature. A reflex.

Sam huffs out an irritated sound. “You and Steve are both pains in my ass, you know that?”

He does not, no. “Steve?” He questions, opening his eyes and facing Sam because the amount of exasperation exhaled with that sigh speaks to him spiritually. Clint thinks he could like this Steve. Another youngest sibling spotted in the wild perhaps.

The question serves to prove that Sam is in possession of multiple levels of Concern for Your Well Being. On a ten scale, this new level resides around “We didn’t recognize you had a concussion until just now” which is essentially on par with “We just realized you are bleeding kind of a lot.” Gut feelings makes Clint lean towards the concussion/brain damage arm of the Reasons to Be Concerned decision making tree. It is an expression of aggravation he sees fairly often. Usually before he finishes his first pot of coffee, almost always on bratty twelve-year-old mentees who claim to not actually be twelve but if that were the case, why did they act like it? Fury also gives off the same vibe if only because Clint suspects that Fury suspects everyone is walking around with at least some mild form of undiagnosed, untreated crauma-trauma.

“Uh, Steve, you know” and oh, good. Clint recognizes that tone too. Usually hears it whenever he dials the operator for spelling advice. Also, Fury. Also Coulson. Also, a certain twelve-year-old-not-twelve-year-old mentee. It is a special blend of aggressive pleading. A please, please tell me you did not do the thing you just did. “You know Captain America? Cap?”

Right. That Steve. “Yeah, sure. We’re acquainted.”

“Acquainted?”

“We fought aliens one time.”

The concussion look gets renewed with vigor. “Fought together only the one time?”

It is an odd question spoken with an odd inflection. Odd enough to deserve the effort of giving it due attention. Clint props himself up on his forearms. The aluminum bowl clangs against the tile. The sound reverberates around them. He readjusts. Clang. Shifts his wrist and hand. Clang-clang. It makes Clint feel like the stone thrown in the pound, ripples of excessively unpleasant noise encircling and cascading out around him. “Any other time I should know about?” Clang.

It might be a murmur of hushed voices. A flicker of movement of shifting bodies that distracts Clint from Sam. He shifts forward, bringing his right arm around–Clang– to get a better look.

The world has returned to its usual 3D, HD, high res quality. The cluster of people no longer one splotchy, fuzzy, amorphous blob of color. He can make out faces. So that’s good. Better. Seeing detail is nice. There Bruce-Hulk sits on the ground cradling an utterly content, pleased as punch Lucky. This is another good thing. Lucky deserves hugs. Clint finds Tony who, for reasons, got himself intricate facial hair since their last visit. It looks cool, but weird. He’s also not wearing a suit and somehow that’s weirder. Cap–er, Steve– is in the crowd, as are a few others. Clint does not recognize the others. Tries to, noticing how the ones he can identify look varying shades of different, but mostly fails. His eyes dance and rove around, picking out details trying to decide if he had been trying not to puke his guts out for longer than he realizes or if the response time around here is stupidly good to amass this amount of people in so short a time. Police hold nothing on these-

Natasha.

All thoughts of police sirens shoot straight out of his head when his eyes land on her. She looks a medium shade of different. Somewhere on the scale that falls between Bruce-Hulk on the high end and Steve’s slicked back hair on the low. No ruling yet on Stark’s vintage tee.

Her red hair looks shades lighter than it had only weeks (months?) before, and with a whole lot more blonde in it. She looks… futz. She just looks different. Those differences so large that he cannot help noticing, but also minute and numerous enough that listing them feels like the most overwhelming thing he has had to do since organizing a freezer bag full of receipts for his taxes five years ago. That had been chaos. To this day he’s still waiting for an envelope from the IRS. Those guys do not mess around. They are not subject to any statute of limitations either. He got pretty good fast at accepting it as a worry he will carry around forever.

This though? That look on her face? This is worse. So much worse. Clint can handle jail. Not this though.

He sits up some more. Clang. “What happened?” The world tips a tad too far to the left. It stokes the embers of the nausea just below his ribs. Clint doesn’t care.

“Woah, hey, man,” Sam begins in protest.

Clint bats at the outstretched arm with his bowl. It misses contact, but he had meant to. “I have puked out of spite before and I will do it again,” he informs madly. Long ago he learned that he pulls off the most ridiculous threats best. It is like, his _one_ superpower.

“Okay, I believe that. Really, I do.” See. Still had it. “First, maybe, let’s try to calm down a little.”

“I am calm,” he lies. “So calm. I am a sea of tranquility. If I do puke it’ll be eucalyptus leaves and, I dunno, sandalwood. Quinoa.” Which is essentially the new granola. Possibly. Katie-Kate hates it with a passion and she is not about the calm life.

Sam fails to respond immediately. Unacceptable.

“What. Happened.”

No one in the group says a thing. If Clint was calm before then he is now perfectly Zen. So Zen he might as well actually be the for real Immortal Iron Fist. Someone find him a tattoo parlor. He suddenly feels an intense need for a raging dragon tattoo permanently inked on his chest. What is the point of having so many people standing around gawking like he crash landed on a ’90s Buick instead of normal tile flooring if none of them were going to answer his question? Just one question. The one. C’mon.

Everyone clearly knows. The shifty eyed, feet shifting, lip chewing, no eye contact making wimps.

Clint lifts the bowl in warning.

Stark steps forward, face a study in alarm. Cap– erg, _Steve_ now apparently– holds him back. One of his extremely large hands latches around the crook of Tony’s elbow. Some team captain. Clint swears mutiny like a scallywag denied rum.

Sam reaches for the bowl. “Let’s maybe-“

Clint bear hugs the thing. Wraps both arms around it, presses the cold metal against his chest and sets a dare to his face. Just try it. He feels panicky in a way he definitely had not before. Clammy, cold sweat breaks out between his shoulder blades, around his hairline, and under his arms. His new mission in life involves even breathing and picking whatever fight necessary in order to get the information he needs so he can fix whatever broke to put that look of Nat’s face. How no one else can take one look at her and not think “How do I make this better” tinges his panic with the fires of anger. It reminds him of New York. The battle of, not the city. After the battle. When she told him Coulson died. That’s how she looks.

He finds her eyes. “I’ll do it.” Not the puking thing. Well, that, but also not that. He means something else. Something Natasha knows. Something that requires no context because context is for lesser men. Context is for people unable to survive Budapest. “I promised you and I meant it.”

He lacks the grenades, flash bangs, arrows _and_ bow to make that promise a reality. His jet privileges are still revoked. Technically he really shouldn’t leave the state, let alone the country unsupervised. But whatever. Semantics. He’s done more with less. Any idiot can sneak out of the country. He has made more than enough poor life decisions to qualify. He has also already snuck not only in, but out of the country. Several countries. So. Yeah. Let’s do this. 

Natasha only shakes her head. The smallest of movements.

“Well then what?”

“Um, dude,” intervenes a middle aged man. He’s got medium brown hair, average height, a body muscled in a lean way more than a bulk way. His tone carries the brittle edges of manic hysteria to it. Like he’s so horrified he wants to laugh. “ _You died._ ”

Oh, yeah. Okay. Sure.

Wait, what?

Sam whips around to sign, seal, and deliver the guy a glare. He looks back to Clint. “Look, I know it sounds crazy. Scott’s,” here Sam hesitates, “not wrong though.”

Scott. Okay. Good to know.

Clint looks to Lucky. The dog’s still in hog heaven, Bruce-Hulk’s massive green ‘roid arms loosely wrapped around the mutt. One equally massive hand pets downward in a long, slow trail from neck to hip. Next Clint looks to the bowl in his hand. He lifts it up a little. Rotating a wrist, twisting it this way and that, he watches as the light reflects off the aged, unpolished aluminum. Alright. Good news, in no particular order, the IRS probably can’t arrest ghosts. He can maybe now star in an episode of The Haunting. Eat your heart out Discovery Channel. Kate will die of jealousy. She can maybe make a guest appearance in his follow up episode. Not so good news, Bruce-Hulk is still petting Lucky. Clint’s been holding this bowl for however long by now and has felt the need to throw it across the room none times. This does not jive with what he binged watched about the supernatural. This especially doesn’t even jive with what Drina, the palm reading, tarot card dealing, crystal ball peering, circus gypsy woman of his youth had taught Clint. She had taught Clint kind of a lot. Clint remembers most of it. He never learned fractions, but he can hold one mean séance.

“Er, one question.”

Sam looks a bit taken aback. “Just the one?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he says with what is obviously skepticism, “shoot.”

“If I’m a ghost, how come I’m still able to hold onto this bowl?”

“Clint, Clint no,” responds the general air of the room. The general air of the room can stick an entire sock in it. He knows ghost stuff, okay. Drina did not believe in half measures. If given a pack of playing cards, a sharpie, and maybe a half hour Clint can recreate a tarot deck. He’s played homeless, tweaking out soothsayer before. So many times before. It ranks his top five life experiences.

“Um, uh,” answers Sam. “Not exactly like that.”

The urge to flop back down begins to grow. The tile calls to him. A siren’s song. The tile is here for you. The tile understands. The tile does not talk shit it knows nothing about. “Dude. Bro. That is exactly how ghosts work. I died. I did not leave. Ghost.” He splays his hands out in a ta-da sort of motion. Settles his hands and bowl back down with a clang.

Scott bounces up and down. “Oh, oh,” he calls out like an excited kid in class, “or a zombie.”

“I think reanimated, decaying corpses exude a more pungent odor,” sasses Tony.

“Ahhh, see. You’re right on that one.”

Scott reminds Clint of someone. Vaguely. Maybe not in the best way either. Too soon to tell. Something about the genuine enthusiasm. The childlike energy. The excitability. All good things in singularity. Together? Not so much. Together makes Clint feel twitchy.

Steve. You know what? No. _Cap_ steps his way forward.

“What do you know about Thanos?” Despite the new hair, the voice remains the same as it had two years ago. The stubborn jut of strong jawline also. Still one hundred percent, all-American Cap.

…With a beard.

Clint scrunches one eye. He is about to probably make an idiot out of himself either in a deaf-and-sometimes-misses-parts-of-words kind of way, or in a didn’t-make-it-past-the-third-grade-never-got-a-GED-never-exactly-correctly-pronounces-words-a-lot-of-the-times kind of way. A fifty-fifty split most days. “I think its pronounced Thanatos?” He questions, hoping like crazy that is not what Cap had actually said. “He’s like the Greek Hades. Job duties entail death and death like situations that involve no longer being alive.”

He goes to museums occasionally. Got stuck in one once. Twice. Shit, no, _Prague._ He forgot about Prague. Three times. Successful that first job had not been. Stole some great art though, enough to pay expenses for a while. Oh to be seventeen again.

“No. Thanos. Not Greek.”

Well. There goes his one-time to sound smart shot down in a flaming wreckage. Bummer. “Isn’t he in Lord of the Rings? An elf, I think? Blond? Judgmental eyebrows?” He tries instead. With less ‘try’ in the ‘trying’ part, because look how far that gets him.

Tony looks honest to God pained. Scott’s eyes widen in fascinated glee. Clint feels unnerved.

Cap remains unimpressed. Unemotional too. “What about Vormir?”

Easy. So easy. This he knows. “Oh, him. Yeah, he is definitely in Lord of the Rings.” Duh.

As it so happens, Lord of the Rings does not feature in what the others dare call an “explanation”. Clint self-titles it: A Crash Course in Current Events; subtitle: Learn about The Past Six Years in Forty Five Minutes *insert exclamation point here* end title. It would make a true to form infomercial. Clint comprises most of it in his head after the Half of Everything Died header. From a third person, objective standpoint it is depressing as Hell. From a not so objective standpoint it is Hell watching the faces around him crumble and twist into ruin as they try to suppress mulish feelings determined to bubble up no matter the force thrown their way.

After a certain point Cap starts talking at the table. Tony breaks soon after, going non-vocal in favor of staring out the window. Hummingbirds flint about outside, though really the man watches nothing but the middle distance. Clint holds onto his aluminum bowl. 

The story takes a sharp turn when, after a five year span of global grief, the team finds a way to get everyone back. It involves a primer on time travel. Bruce-Hulk takes over this portion. Scott adds in a mournful, “Yeah, Return to The Future is total bullshit.” Even so, the guy still manages to inject an unnerving amount of happy optimism into it. The tide of déjà vu, tip of the tongue familiarity rolls back in. Clint still can’t place him. 

“You get used to him,” a woman, Hope, informs. Still frowning, Clint flicks his eyes from her leaning against the wall back to a sitting Scott. No, Clint is already familiar. He just doesn’t know why.

Scott pivots his chair from side to side. “Yeah, I’m a lot to handle.” He says, prideful. Cheerfully.

The tale continues on. The team retrieves the Infinity Stones. Space travel features in part of it. Neat. This part is suspiciously skimmed over in a manner guaranteed to come back around and bite Clint later. Of this, he feels certain. For sure. Like that time when he forgot to get that fallen tater tot out of the bottom of the oven, and the next day had accidently set off the apartment’s fire alarms in an ill-timed attempt at heating up pre-cooked lasagna. Something happened in space. Something bad enough that everyone would rather stand outside in a freezing January rainstorm at three in the morning than spend the one minute it would take to fish it out now.

Anyway. They get the magic rocks. Bruce-Hulk snaps his fingers. Everyone comes back. Yay.

The evil, space Thanatos can’t be having that. Happiness– every villain’s cyanide, even if they are for real aliens. A battle happens. Which is when the retelling gets choppy. Battles ramp up adrenaline to insane peaks in the moment. That very same insane adrenaline spike also pretty much guarantees a small form retrograde amnesia. Honestly, battles make for bad stories. Sure the events happened. Except retelling the sequence in the right order is a bit like piecing together a W-2 after it meets an untimely end in an industrial shredder. Horrifying in the moment and makes for a painful memory.

The details slip. After a certain time, the nuances of what happened matter less and less. The time and tape required to form the picture no longer seem worth the effort. Until the survivors decide the details don’t matter at all. What happened had happened. You either got it, or you weren’t there.

Clearly an amount of time has passed. The only thing they can remember is who died. The only parts of war that do survive time. The deaths.

In this case, the battle took a kid.

A teenager. Spider-Man used a suit created by Tony himself. One part spider, one part iron to comprise a whole that allowed him to take the Infinity Stones himself and incorporated them into his suit just iron enough to let him. Then he snapped his fingers, putting an end to the battle for good. He said his last words in Tony’s arms. Died in Tony’s arms.

The battle is over. The grief that remains, it isn’t a lingering sadness. It is fresh.

Time had passed. Just not as much as Clint initially thought.

Even lacking the tact God saw fit to bestow a warthog, Clint knows to keep his mouth shut. He has questions. So many questions. The first question out of the variety pack is callus as fuck and comprised one hundred percent of the parts of Clint that basically guarantee him a spot in Dante’s everlasting Inferno. He knows this. If he could control it, he would–but he can’t. So the first thing his stupid curiosity wants to know is who won the bet? Fury and Tony have each been gunning to get Spider-Man for years. Their smack talk is the stuff of legend. The betting pool got out of hand eight hours after it started. Clint needs to know who won. He needs to know how they won. He needs to know when. Spidey foils the world’s leading tech genius, _and_ the head of an intelligence organization like a champ. It warms Clint’s soul. Or, well, warmed. Obviously.

Yup. Hell. For sure. Not just one circle either. He’ll be touring all seven of them.

Clint’s fed the masked vigilante the few times he swung by the roof on grill night. Not because of what the vigilante does for the city. Well, not only. Just, the entertainment he unknowingly provided. Fury’s gone on blood pressure medication because of The Bet (all caps for epicness). Clint last saw Tony manically trying to harness pigeons with cameras. Pepper had his legal team looking into privacy laws.

They’ve chatted, him and Spider-Man. No way that guy was a teenager. Young, very young adult, _maybe_. At the least. Besides, for Spider-Man to be a teenager the kid would’ve had to start when he was like, ten. Logistically, timeline wise, what little Clint knows of age-to-height ratios, that doesn’t track.

Something does not feel right.

Everyone’s face is so raw. Tony’s near tears, trying to come off as angry so no one says anything. Now is not the time to ask about the kid. If ever. Tony? Definitely not ever.

Fingers drumming on aluminum, what Clint asks is this, “So, I died in space? Right?”

Where once everyone was so keen to share, now they are not.

Knew it. Called it. Space is the hidden tater tot. “What? Did I crash into an asteroid or something?” An asteroid would definitely be the lasagna. He could keep the metaphor going.

“You and Natasha volunteered,” Cap clears his throat, his eyes as wet as Tony’s. “We sent you,” he tries again, not making any progress. He’s still glaring at the table, slowly shaking his head at it like the mahogany had been the one to off half the world’s population.

“The Soul Stone is kept on a planet called Vormir,” intercedes Bruce-Hulk. He sounds resigned. Lucky sits in his lap. The dog licks the ginormous green chin whenever pets stop. It is ridiculous. It is the greatest. Clint thinks a Vine of the interaction would break the internet in the best way possible. “In order to get the stone, whoever wants it has to sacrifice someone they love.”

Ah. Whelp. That’s not great. Explains why Natasha left as soon as they got Clint up and sitting at a table. He’s the one who died. He won what could only have been the dirtiest fight in the history of dirty, greasy, trash littered, back alley brawls. He left her.

“So how?”

“She won’t tell,” says Sam. “Knowing the two of you? It definitely did not involve rock-paper-scissors.”

“You don’t know me,” Clint fronts. It gets small, wet laughs out of Tony and Cap. 

“Wouldn’t have to, we know her,” jokes Steve, siding with the medic who’s been pushing Gatorade like he’s the boss of Clint. As if Steve ever willingly went to medical a day in his life. Clint’s heard the rumors. Betrayer. The mutiny thing had sort of been a joke before, now there are definitely merits to pounder.

“He’s got you there, Katniss.”

“No, how am I here?” Clint asks, ignoring them all. He takes Tony off his mutiny allies list. “If I died in space, and if apparently I’m not a ghost, why am I here now?”

“Ah, what do you know about the multiverse?”

Clint knows better than to answer with Lord of The Rings. He kind of wants to anyway. Purely for continuity’s sake. He refrains all the same. For the best, as it turns out. The answer he gets is weirder than finding out Earth got alien invaded a second and third time. It is also much more… technical? Yeah let’s go with technical. The long and short of it pretty much boils down to this:

Clint is Clint. Clint is also not Clint.

It is… it is a lot for two simple sentences. Simple, simple sentences. Like a See Spot Run book. Except more abstract. A nightmare of science sewed to philosophy struck by magic and scrambled by time travel. A modern day Frankenstein's Monster, except it is Clint's life scaring the villagers. Stupid. But as an allegory for his life? So unsurprising. Much more on the nose than tater tots hiding under an oven coil. Ugh. Futz. He needs to look up the definition of allegory. It may not mean what he thinks.

Bright side, now he knows why Spider-man is younger here. Or was. Shit. Why is he such a garbage human of insensitivity? Clint hunches over the bowl. His head smacks the table top. The aluminum rim digs painfully under his ribs. It is his penance.

Okay, uhhh, brighter side? The IRS definitely can't get him now. Read ‘em and weep, Al Capone. Also, he now knows how he went from futzing around the sidewalk one second to crash landing into an open concept living space the next. Cosmic blow back from The Avenger's & Company mucking about with space rocks and time travel, or whatever.

That last sentence doesn't seem to shine so brightly with the positivity.

Groaning while thumping his head repeatedly against the tabletop feels like an appropriate response to the past hour of his existence. He follows the impulse. Valiantly Clint ignores the arising murmurs of concern. A question burns at him. Lodges in his throat, mingling with all the pent up stomach acid. He doesn't ask. As a product of being raised half by a gypsy women and half by two borderline sociopathic master assassins, Clint understands more than anything the cosmic forces in life along with the extent of his luck. Which is to say the cosmic forces hate him and he has bad luck. Bad luck that turns into worse luck. For him, Mars exists in a perpetual state of retrograde. He starts at rock bottom. Then he manages to find a shovel and digs down deeper.

So when he thinks of questions like: Is there a way of getting back to my reality? The answer is no. Most assuredly no. “My answer is no,” says the magic 8 ball. “Ask again later,” it says after a second shake. “My answer is no,” says the Magic 8 Ball later. It is such a sure answer. There exists no point in even asking the question. In even finding the Magic 8 Ball.

Why is he thinking of Magic 8 Balls? The futz?

Ignoring a band of superheroes works only for so long. Steve wraps both hands around Clint’s head, where jaw meets ear, preventing further blunt contact between his forehead and the table. Color him persistent, Clint maintains the downward force.

“Look Clint-”

“I swear on Mufasa’s grave if you finish that with “I can keep this up all day” you will end up covered in already been swallowed Gatorade.”

Sam belts out laughter. The deep, infectious kind that makes a person feel a hair better just hearing it. It's kind of nice. Doesn’t make up for all the Gatorade, just to be clear.

Something slimy flickers across his hand. Super gross. Something else cool and wet replaces it, forcing its way across Clint's palm. Suddenly he had a handful of dog fur. Never minding Steve, Clint pushes back and away to look past the edge of the table. Lucky looks up at him balefully. Tail thumping at the sight of his human's face. Instantly Clint folds onto the ground. Luck presses forward so they're sitting chest to chest, his head hooks around Clint's shoulder. Abandoning the bowl, Clint hugs Luck with both arms because Luck is the best and deserves all the hugs in the world. Well, universe. Because This!Clint went up and died in space leaving Clint to clean up the mess created by the severe emotional fallout. A task not within Clint's wheelhouse. Not even slightly. Does it count as self-loathing if the yourself you hate is from a different reality? No rush. Asking for a friend.

Lucky licks his ear. Clint buries his nose into golden fur and exhales. Long and slow.

The movement does nothing to discourage the dog. The trajectory of slimy tongue follows along the path to end up in Clint’s hair. He is going to have some wicked cowlicks.

The popping of aging knees alerts Clint of someone sitting by his right. Immediate right. Immediately immediate. If he were to throw out an elbow it would make solid contact. Friendly violations of his personal space make a weird double-edge sword for Clint these days. On the one edge, it is nice. Being sat by close enough to feel body heat, relaxes him. Floods him with a sense of belonging. It is such a rarity. On the other edge, it is terrible. The opposite of relaxing. Panic inducing because of the rarity. He remains an isolated hermit for a reason. Lots of reasons.

Peering through fur, Clint spies Tony. Of course. Who else?

“Okay there, Champ?”

Clint wants to laugh. It would be a wet, hysterical thing if he does. It would make him cough too. Coughing sits in exceptionally dangerous territory at the moment, too much like vomiting. Right now, one will lead right into the other. He swallows it down. Buying time, well, more time. This is a kind of bill that gets paid, in the end. He’ll keep kiting checks as long as he’s able though.

“Anything you would like to share with the class?” Sometimes Tony sounds like a right asshole. This is not one of those times. Inconveniently.

Right now, Tony looks excruciatingly kind. So empathetically compassionate towards Clint that Clint feels his lungs start to seize up and his eyes turn wet. There are too many things going on. Between the nausea that will not be denied, magic space rocks, and multiverses, crying will just be too much. One straw too many. Tony can keep the straw. It is his. Clint is very much concerned with the camel’s back. Animal safety and all. Clint grew up in the circus. So, you know.

“Uh, yeah,” Clint clears his throat as gently as possible. He tears his focus away from Tony’s stupidly warm eyes turning instead to the fur right in front of his face because fur never makes people cry just from the overwhelming power of feelings. “It’s just, uh…”

He cannot cry. He can’t. He won’t. He refuses. Stop it, eye ducts.

“Both ears, ready and waiting.”

Fuuuutz. They need something. Anything. It has to be from Clint and it has to be now. Otherwise too long of a pause and people are going to jump in spouting off all kinds of Hallmark garbage. The same platitudes he has been hearing since Loki. Only worse because these strangers don’t know Clint. They don’t know what he did. And Clint will have to tell them. He’ll have to watch their faces fall as they hear and realize that not only did they lose a teammate, they lost a teammate and instead of just getting him back what they did get back is a worse, shittier version. Not a Clint 1.0. Or even a Clint 0.0. A Clint -1.

“So, one small criticism. You know what? Let’s not even call it that. Such negative connotations associated with that word, let’s just. Let’s just call it a note, okay?” Tony first touches Clint’s shoulder with the barest brush of fingertips. Slowly, as it become apparent Clint won’t throw an elbow after all, fingertips become fingers become a palm until there is an entire hand firmly gripping his shoulder. “A small note between friends, yeah?”

“Yeah, sure, shoot.” Clint responds not out of any desire to actively participation in the conversation, the words exit on their own. Words sometimes do that with him. To him? With him?

“Okay, great. See, here’s the deal. You can’t tell a guy that you’re fine and have something to share without actually being fine and having something to share.” Can people hear sad smiles? Clint is picturing one. “It’s rude, or so I’m told. A lot. I’m told that a lot, because it was a thing I did and didn’t know. Definitely not anything against you. I bet you were just like me and didn’t know. And, look, we fixed that. So, want to try again?”

The burning is back. Not a dull ember in a fireplace, but small sparks in a dried out Christmas tree.

“Uh, yeah, no. I get that,” he stutters out. There is fur in his face and Clint focuses momentarily on his moral obligation to pet that fur. “It’s just, uh,” he must not be petting fast enough. Luck starts licking his ear again. “It’s just uh, what with the whole Chitauri thing, three alien invasions in two years is a lot. That’s, uh, it’s a lot.”

Stark opens his mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again. Shuts it again. He looks, aggressively confused? Confused and confused as to why? “Okay, that is,” the hand clasping Clint’s shoulder falls off, “not at all what I thought you were going to say. Not for the obvious reasons either.”

Cap, in the duration of Tony acting like a beached carp, walks over. He takes a knee besides Tony, eyes on Clint. Tony twists around to face him. 

“I’m sorry, I honestly thought he was going to go for the deflection there. I mean he did, all chips in. Solid ten out of ten for dedication. I just. The effectiveness was not anticipated. Critical hit on that front. I am, wow, yeah. Yeesh.”

Cap looks all kinds of troubled. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Flat brow and flinty eyes.

“Hey, guys,” Sam dictates to the room, “I think it’d be best if ya’ll got out. Like, now.”

People leave. Sam has a voice like Cap. Sam acts a lot like Cap actually.

Sam is a person to watch, Clint decides. He footnotes it for later.

Right at the moment, he has a problem. A math problem. Yeah, he had been deflecting. Yeah he made it deliberately weak so they would call him out on it. So then he could start an argument that would give him an opportunity to manipulate the conversation. Except, apparently, Clint said something else Tony and Cap deem more important. Three alien attacks in two years.

Is that not right? Technically it could be four attacks. Aliens invaded New York and then Wakanda in a single year. Four in two years? Wait, that’s worse. Much worse. “Four in two years?” He tries. It feels like he’s on a game show. Buying letters with money to fill empty spaces with words in some high stakes, off brand game of Hangman. Unfortunately, like Clint’s last attempt at trying, it yields no results. He sets about the math again. Rerunning the facts.

Behind him, Sam messes with the chairs. Pulling them out and away, gliding their wheels easily over the nubby carpet and lining them against the back wall. “Don’t mind me, man,” he instructs Clint, moving Clint’s vacant seat as well. For the life of him, Clint can’t fathom why Sam’s bothering. It seems like a lot of pointless, wasted effort.

Oh, wait. Okay. He totally forgot. For the ones who survived Thanos’ snap, five years had passed before they managed to find a way to undo the damage. That makes it three invasions in five years. Plus the two years since the whole Chitauri/Loki mess. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologizes, hoping they realize he’s just bad at math and not, like, got the empathy of a slotted spoon. “Seven years. Four alien attacks in seven years. Better, just not like, great.”

The numbers are there. They’re saying something that Clint just can’t see.

He has a bad feeling.

“Again, don’t mind me. Just reachin’ around you here.” Sam’s at his back, reaching around his peripheral. Clint hates it. “I know, I know,” Sam soothes reading the tension for what it is, a stressed out master assassin with a stranger at his back. “Only for a few more seconds and then I’ll back off, okay? Promise.”

Sam sets the aluminum bowl upright. It hits the carpet without a sound. The clang is dearly missed. As promised Sam disappears from Clint’s space.

He reappears behind Lucky. He takes a seat in a chair. Out of everything this little interaction on Sam’s part is what doesn’t make sense. Clint looks at the bowl. Leans around Lucky to look at Sam. Repeats.

What?

Sam gives away nothing. Sitting in a chair, forearms on knees, clasped hands hanging down. An expression of nothing etched on his face. Giving away not a single clue. Clink looks back to the bowl. The answers must be written in the grain of the metal.

“Clint,” says Cap throwing a lot of weight into only two syllables. “What year is it?”

With great unwillingness, Clint drops his scrying. He turns to find Steve and Tony went and adopted Sam’s expression. Unnerving. Unnerving and bad. These three look nearly identical to his tenants after the Great Tater Tot Disaster of… whatever year that had been. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that it had not meant nice things for him then and it most probably means no better things for him now. He flattens his lips into a line. Looks back to the bowl.

“For you,” Tony adds. “No math. Tell us what year it is for you.”

Ha. Joke’s on Stark. Clint never knows the year. Not anymore. He knows the date of the attack on New York. He knows how many years passed since. Getting the year always involves math for him now.

Clint does not answer with words. Not right away. He sighs instead. He is so tired. Wrung out, put away wet. He leans into Lucky. “Let’s not,” he decides as Lucky takes more of his human’s weight. Lucky is, bar none, the absolute best dog. This day needs finishing. “Just tell me. Whatever I’m not getting? Just tell me. Please.”

A pause. Great. Another group of people unwilling to talk. These people and silences, it’s annoying.

Sam tells him.  


It is with not only the full breadth of his professional career, a childhood raised in the shadowy underground of crime, but also his own brief foray into general law breaking that allows Clint to say, with absolute certainty, he has been drugged. Not consensually, may he add. Which, you know, for a group of superheroes does not speak well toward the “hero” aspect of their team byline. Although, what goes around comes around, so getting upset about it seems a little hypocritical on his part. They didn’t poison him. So far, he’s come out on top. There is nothing really to get upset over in light of that little realization. Technically, they do still have the moral high ground. What with him being “emotionally wrought” and in “physical distress” and all. So reasons they had.

They also had a doctor. Like, an actual MD whose first name is not Web. A doctor who pretty much took over the second their little rag tag group stumbled in through the automatic sliding doors. Muttering about medical necessity and all that garbage. She threw around the word ‘dehydrated’ a lot.

A lot, a lot.

Which? Totally accurate. But still also, you know, rude.

Pretense kind of demands Clint get his grouch on about it.

Which is what originally clued him into the facts of the situation. He can’t seem to feel strongly about anything. Nothing. For the past… half hour?... he has been trying to get good and worked up and failing at it spectacularly. Which is all different shades of dumb.

The entire situation is tailored made to rub his nerves in all the wrong ways.

There is an IV in the crook of his elbow. A bag of what is hopefully only simple saline, but let’s be real– is saline with additives– steaming into his veins. They put some kind of clamp one of his fingers. A pulse oximeter? Yeah, that. At regular intervals a blood pressure cuff crushes the ever loving crap out of his left arm. He is also entirely alone. The large, multi-bed medical suit eerily quiet. Quiet in a way that begs for unexpected appetences. From ghosts. Creepy child specters. He hates it. All of it. Except he doesn’t actually? Truthfully he doesn’t care. Instead of unnerved he feels passive. Chemically induced content overrode his Freak Out and Escape by Any Means Necessary panic button long ago leaving him drowsy, lethargic, and largely indifferent.

Never before has Clint ever felt so chill. The head of the bed is raised. The medical suit has a decent view of the surrounding New York City skyscrapers set against the backdrop of an overcast, afternoon sky. So far twenty-seven birds have flown by.

The combined herding between Sam and Cap had been what got Clint on the bed-cart-thing in the first place. Lucky following their lead, taking it upon his doggy self to become the world’s best shock blanket is what’s keeping him here. Draped in the V of his human’s legs, Lucky’s head rests on the exact same spot he had accidently dug into with his thick paw nails earlier. His floppy ears are easily within petting distance. Clint takes advantage.

He has snuck down so low he is practically one with the foam mattress.

The artificial calm nearly drags him under into a full-fledged nap. That’s when it happens. A loud clatter of something metal hitting the ground with force. Different sounding than an aluminum bowl. More like a steel alloy, dense and thick. Turning his head just in time, Clint observes a blur rocketing through a downward arc towards the floor. The blur lands in a crouch next to a dented vent cover. Even stoned, backtracking the trajectory takes no effort at all. Mostly because it’s unnecessary. Obviously the blur originated from the highly placed vent. Looking upward shows the now uncovered air return duct. The dry wall surrounding the opening now cracked and pocked from the sheer force of ingress.

Ah. So.

This blur is one of Clint’s people. The ventilation people. The people who see an air duct and think, “yup, imma getting’ in there. Dust and allergies be damned.”

When stationary, the blur takes shape of a young adult male. As with most who traverse the vents, dust covers a large portion of his overall surface area. Lucky thumps his tail. Lucky understands. Lucky is friend to the ventilation people.

“Aw,” the guy coos melting, already won over. “They didn’t mention a dog.”

Overhead the all-knowing, all seeing, ever present AI responds before either human, or animal can manage a sound. “Sharing such information was deemed unnecessary as it was clearly stated to all individuals on site that Mr. Barton was to remain undisturbed until otherwise deemed fit for social interaction,” the AI chides. It sounds female here. In this universe. Not proper male English. Part of Clint has trouble getting over that. Tony had been protective of Jarvis to the point of severe emotional attachment.

Also, side note, “deemed fit for social interaction”? The Hell? Like, what? Suddenly Clint is a biter?

Insulting.

“Oh,” the guy drawls out in realization. It’s distracting and keeping Clint from getting grumpy from all the psych ward buzz words. “Is that who this is? I had no idea.”

Yeah. That tone? He had all the ideas.

“Mr. Stark should really put some signs in the ducts. Let me tell you. I got so lost. You have no idea. Feared for my survival.” The guy looks entirely too pleased for any of that to be remotely true.

Vent dwellers don’t get lost in vents. Puh-lease.

“Mr. Stark would like me to inform you, Mr. Parker, that you are a bold face liar. He requests you leave immediately.”

“He called me bold?” Mr. Parker gushes as he grins the grin of the unrepentant and deliberately obtuse. “That’s very kind of him to say so. Please tell him I said thank you.”

The AI relays no reply. Mr. Parker rocks back onto his heels, hands on hips in waiting. He rocks back and forward, heels to toes to heels. A kid playing with fire. Striking matches and holding onto the wood stem for as long as he possibly dares. The threat of a burn only makes it more enticing. Tony is the match burning. If he acts anything like Clint’s Tony then the man is too busy grinding his molars as he contemplates the meaning of justifiable homicide to give an immediate response. He won’t. Not until later. A type of fire, to be sure. If it is the type of fire this new guy is expecting? That is the unknown variable.

Not that Tony would ever hurt the guy. Just. Ugh. Tony’s weird, okay? He exacts revenge by hacking your Netflix account and going to town. Effective. But cruel and unusual.

“Cute, kid,” pipes Tony’s voice directly into the room. In real time proving Clint wrong. Maybe there remains hope for Mr. Parker’s online streaming accounts. “But now is not the time. Out. Be gone.”

“Are you sure? Like really sure? Because he’s here and I’m here. We’re both here. Why waste this totally unplanned, completely accidental opportunity? Plus, I haven’t even said hi yet. Leaving now would be rude. I was not raised to be rude, Mr. Stark, it is not done in the Parker household.” There are stenographers out there who would straight up murder to have the words per minute this guy’s mouth possesses. For fast talking, that borderline redefined the term.

He is also not unreasonable, for all Clint caught maybe half of what was spoken. “I mean,” Clint drawls the words out slowly from the sludge of his brain, “he does have a point.”

“Barton, no.” Commands Tony. Effect lost when the man is not physically present in the room. “Or are we forgetting that within the past hour you hurled up half a liter of Gatorade and what I am terrified was a for real eucalyptus leaf. Petrified, I tell you.”

Haha. Yeah. Clint forgot. “Meh,” he feigns indifference knowing full well others are listening. Sam had gotten one look at that mangled leaf floating in the red sea contained within that aluminum bowl and instantly emoted ten different shades of done. It felt like a defining moment in their relationship. Clint only hopes he’s listening now. Makes nearly chocking on that calzone basil leaf so totally worth it.

No. Really. He will amend his Yelp review to five stars.

“’Meh?’ I’m sorry, but did you just-“

“That shit ain’t right, Barton,” shouts Sam’s voice, overtaking Tony’s. “You need rest and hydration. That is what the doctor ordered and that is what you’re getting. What’s wrong with you?”

“See. Rest and hydration,” parrots Tony. “It is not me, on my lonesome, making these rules up. I am not the sole voice of reason here, okay? We got a doctor and everything. Now everyone to their own corner. Meaning, Parker out. Barton, take a nap. You can meet and greet later. Much later.”

Yeah. Sure. Maybe. Except, also, he thinks not. “He can’t leave yet.” In for a penny and all that. “He hasn’t petted the dog yet. He can’t leave until he’s petted the dog.”

Tony’s aggravated exhale is a sound of beauty. “Okay, first of all “petted”? Second of all, and also for the one hundredth time, later. Not now. Later. Peter. Get out.”

Clint rolls his eyes.

At this point Peter looks about ready to radiate joy out of his very pours. He’s beaming at Clint. All for reasons Clint needs a nap to profile out. He does. Need one, that is. He is so tired. Very, extremely tired. Except now that he knows rest had been prescribed taking one feels wrong. His inability to feel upset may be temporarily on hold. Fun fact though: emotions are not required to argue. Outside of sedation, there exists no drug that can entirely take away one’s God given right to be a contrary pain in the ass and that is medical fact. Site it, et al.

“It is universal law.” Informs Clint ignoring the ‘petted’ mishap. Look. Sometimes mistakes are made. “Social expectation and obligation. If you see a dog in want of pets, you have to give pets. I don’t make the rules, man. ‘S just the way it goes.”

A sharp inhale of breath.

No response.

…No response.

“Mr. Stark has terminated the connection,” the AI dutifully informs.

Ha! There we go. Now the man is definitely grinding his molars. Grinding them straight into permanent enamel damage and tension headaches. This is not a moral victory, obviously. But a victory none the less. Sometimes the petty arguments are what breathe spiritual life into a guy.

Peter bounces, practically vibrates in place. “Did you mean it?”

Clint stares. What?

“Did you mean it? Is it really okay if pet your dog?”

“Not my dog,” Clint corrects out of habit because. Well. Because. “And Lucky here will mope around for the rest of forever if you don’t.”

“Really?”

Really, really. Clint nods a deep affirmative. “He is classically trained in drama.”

Peter lopes over to Clint’s bedside at such a speed that Clint’s not entirely sure he’s finished talking before the guy is there, politely offering a hand for Lucky to sniff. There is no hesitation. Lucky noses into the hand, shifting and raising his head as necessary for the new human to have better access to fulfil the universal social contract of petting a canine in want of attention.

This dog is so spoiled. If the universe were just, there would be more human’s like Peter to enable Lucky’s sense of entitlement to affection. As is the natural order of things.

Lucky’s tail beats against the bed. A steady, slow beat. It lolls Clint further down.

Sleep’s only a few moments away. Peter’s cooing at and praising Lucky in equal turns. The mutt’s in a boneless slump against his human’s leg, everything feels decidedly less awful. Doctor prescribed or not, sleep is inevitable. He won’t get _more awake_. So, Clint’s leaning into it.

“So, who’s dog?”

Clint’s no longer leaning into it. “Wha,” he cracks open a painfully dry eye.

Peter’s gently flopping Lucky’s ears back and forth, one ear for each hand. “You said Lucky isn’t your dog?” Flip. “So, who’s?” Flop.

Oh. Right. That story. “I saved him from a mafia.”

“And gave him to someone else after?”

“No.”

Flip. Flop. “But Lucky is not your dog?” Flip.

“Correct.”

“He just lives with you? And you take care of him?” Flop.

“Yes.”

Flip. Flop flip. “Okay.” The way Peter says it makes it sound less like an affirmation of understanding and more like a declaration of a decision having been made. Like there’s an argument to be made, sure. Only Peter decides not to. It is not a situation Clint is unfamiliar with. There are so many people who want to argue with Clint (so many) most of whom, after a moment’s pause, sort of deflate and go on about their own lives and business. In terms of life experiences it makes the top five, though below the whole tarot card trick.

“I gotta say,” and he does because now that he’s leaning away from sleep Clint’s duty bound to chuck all his chips in that little corner of defiance. “You don’t look familiar.”

Comically, Peter’s hands freeze mid-motion and as a result Lucky’s ears stick straight up. Transformed into a long furred, very blonde, uh Dash hound? No. Wrong. Dang it. The one from the movie Up. The mean one with the scary voice. Very big.

Lucky, the champ, appears not at all bothered by this.

“Uh, yeah,” Peter hems and haws. “I’m not from around here?”

…

…

No.

Shut. Up.

What?

The back of his mind trills in the excitement of information found. Doberman, it screams at him. Though it proves easy to push away. Super easy. Mostly because now is not the time for fun animated movie facts. Not at all. This guy is just like him. This guy is almost _exactly_ like him.

But so much worse.

“Dude,” mourns Clint almost begging to be wrong. Because. Wow. That is awful.

Peter, bless his arachnid soul, doesn’t even bother trying to deny it. He drops Luck’s ears and collapses forward to wrap his arms around the mutt instead. “I know,” the guy grieves into golden fur. His voice is muffled, and he is definitely crushing Clint’s leg.

Lucky leans and twists to lick the closest skin part of Peter he can. Turns out to be hair.

“The guy from here was in? High school?”

Peter nods. Face still hidden.

“You are not a high schooler.”

“I have my master’s.”

“Aw, buddy.” That’s. That’s. An age discrepancy all right. “Are you Spider-Man too?”

“Yeah. Kinda. I mean,” he straightens. His eyes are red and so’s his face. “I am, but I can’t right now. The guy from here has family and friends who know about Spider-Man and I can’t be Spider-Man until someone explains the situation to them because otherwise it would just be cruel to give them that hope, but if we do that then…”

“They might want to meet you?”

Peter nods.

Yeesh. “I mean, maybe they’re not so different? Or maybe they’re totally different?”

Pained is a great way to describe Peter’s face at the moment.

“Or maybe this can be your villain origin story instead? I dunno. Shit.”

The terrible joke earns him a wet laugh. “No. Yes. I mean, my friends are my age but have never met a Peter Parker. The Peter Parker from here? His friends, they are totally different. Their names, their looks, and that is not including the fact they are all ten years younger. ”

Wait. Ten years? “You’re ten years in the past?”

Peter’s back to petting Lucky. Although in a much more somber fashion. “Yeah, sort of? The year is more or less the same. But. Yeah. It’s like I got born ten years earlier in my world.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Sames-ese. I’m ten years in the future.” More or less. Clint understands what Peter had means by that. The math gets screwy when you need to factor in not only time travel, but interdimensional travel, and also random garbage like magical space rocks. “And I was born later? Yeah. Later.” Much later.

Which is about as nice a way of any as saying that all those varying shades of different Clint saw earlier? That was because those faces were super old. Er. Older. Than before. Than he is used to.

“Huh,” says Peter.

“Right?”

“Weird,” agrees Peter.

They fall into contemplative silence. Peter continues petting Lucky. Clint continues counting birds.

“Oh, hey, did you meet Scott?”

Peter perks up. “Yes I did.”

“Does he remind you of someone?”

“Yes. He does.”

“Know who?”

“No. Do you?”

Dang it. “No, but I don’t like it.”

“Yeah me either.” A tiny crease appears when Peter narrows his eyes. “It feels like… like I left the stove _and_ the soldering iron on _and_ I’m late for work _and_ I’m already stuck on the subway.”

“And the rent was due five days ago.”

The immediate sucking in of a hiss is very telling. “Yeeees. That.”

“Maybe it’s not that bad?”

They share a look. No. It is that bad. Will be that bad, because for two guys stuck in a universe most absolutely not their own how could it be anything other than bad? And poor Peter has a group of people he’ll have to meet before he can get back to his life. If he gets back to it. Clint can get the guy whatever credentials he needs. That is no chore. But Clint’s Spidey lived and breathed the suit. This Peter cannot be much different. No way can he just give it up. No way he will either.

What a mess.

Well, better count the small favors Clint supposes. At least Lucky is happy. Everything _does_ feel less terrible overall. And, well, at least Clint doesn’t have a family he’s got to talk to. Explain all of this to. Gold star, bonus points for being an orphan with a brother so estranged Clint no longer knows him from Adam.

Thank fuck.

Could you imagine? Him? With a family? Wife and kids? How random would that be? Where would they even live? Not a city. Too exposed. It’d have to be like, a farm.

God. Talk about a nightmare.

Clint knows jack shit about tractors. And cats hate him. And horses are not to be trusted. And the last time he held a baby Clint hadn’t moved for a solid forty-five minutes, afraid any sort of jostling would set of a detonation sequence. Children like him okay. But Simone had opinions about what her sons picked up from him and they weren’t all great. Any of his progeny would be doomed.

Well, he doesn’t have to worry about dealing with any of that.

It is just too random of a thought and so Clint, without ceremony, chucks it right out of his head. Peter’s gone back to petting Lucky. Neither pick the conversation back up. Because, uh? What more is there to say about their predicament?

Nothing.

Clint glances to the bag hanging off the IV pole then to the Gatorade on the bedside table. Ideally ponders mutiny. The merits of verses the similarities to the whole Civil War fiasco. The farm family pops in out of nowhere. Just. So random. Natasha slides into his thoughts. Out of his thoughts. Back in again. Had that been Bucky Barnes? He never did get an answer on Stark’s facial hair. Or Steve’s beard? Had that been a thing, or had Clint hallucinated it? He did not allow himself to acknowledge it until just now. Also, what in the actual crap happened to Bruce? It would be weirder, except Lucky clearly loved green Bruce. So maybe whatever happened had been a good thing?

“I need to get a Vine of Green Bruce petting Lucky,” Clint murmured. Sometimes speaking a goal out loud increased the odds of him remembering to actually do it.

Peter’s eyes pinched together. “Huh?”

Bruce-Hulk petting Lucky had been so cute, it made Clint feel aggressive. Like, a hug something so hard it would feel loved forever kind of way. “It would melt Dr. Doom’s heart.” Clint informed seriously. “The guy would take one look and repent.”

“Uh.”

Clint did not like Peter’s face. “What?”

“Uhhhh.”

“What?!”

“Is, er, Vine still a thing here?”

“What do you mean ‘is Vine still a thing here?’!”

“They kind of, sort of, killed it off in my world.”

What?

No.

WHY?

But Peter’s sympathy remains unrelenting. Clint’s stomachs sinks just the slightest bit because, yeah, no actually, that fits. That so totally fits with everything. Thematically and everything. The whole entire day.

So. Yeah. You know what? Everything is awful. Screw it. He’s taking that nap.

**Author's Note:**

> Achievement Unlocked: Failed to Answer the Question That Is the Literal Title of the Work.


End file.
